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In early April, Katelyn was in a financial bind. At home and sick with COVID-19, she hadn’t been paid in weeks. And her bills were due.
“My landlord is kinda beating down my door right now,” she said in a voicemail to the podcast hotline: (724) 276-6534; that’s 724 ARM N LEG.
Weeks later, Katelyn got back in touch: She had made it through with her financial health intact, thanks to a combination of playing hardball with one company and knowing how to play nice with others.
Katelyn works in collections for a financial institution, so she knew how to ask for help. Even so, she didn’t find the process easy. She came out of the ordeal with hard-won tips for all of us, and a heck of a story.
Here are two other resources from the episode: our favorite TikTok mom shares tips for dealing with medical bills and collection agencies, and Hello Landlord. It’s a free online tool that automatically generates letters you can send to your landlord, asserting your legal rights. (Right now, those rights may include some federal protections against evictions.)
“SEASON-19” of “An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions.
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Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
